The Knicks struggled to explode leadership during the three-game losing streak that dragged them to Detroit on Saturday night.
This time, however, they were able to quickly build such an insurmountable advantage that coach Tom Thibodeau even let Julius Randle rest for the entire fourth period.
Randle went up in flames and delivered a mind-blowing first quarter to lead the Knicks to a 125-81 victory over the Pistons at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
Randle, who fought on Friday in a home loss to the Mavericks, finished with 29 points and Reggie Bullock added 22. The two combined to shoot 17 to 28 and 11 to 19 in the 3-point range, much of it coming while the Knicks opened a 30-point lead in the first half. RJ Barrett, who also had a bad night on Friday, added 14 points and Elfrid Payton had 11 points and nine assists.
The Knicks (25-25) hit 53.8 percent (and 47.4 percent of rock bottom) to break a three-game losing streak and return to 0.500 again. They have a clash against the Nets on Monday after Sunday’s well-deserved day off.
Randle was the face of the Knicks’ fights in the first half of the consecutive game, scoring just 14 points from 5-in-20 (including 1-in-7 deep) pitches Friday on an unusual night for All-Star. He was not alone, as the Knicks hit just 36 percent of the field against the Mavericks, their third worst score of the season, and exploded a double-digit lead for the second game in a row.
But Randle immediately made sure that Saturday would have a very different ending.
In the Knicks’ first two possessions, Randle drained a 3-point corner and then punched another from the other corner. In two possessions, he gave 3 more points than on Friday night. And he was just getting started.
In the beginning was Randle and Bullock’s show. The two combined to score 28 of the Knicks’ first 30 points, including a pair of three each during a 14-0 run in the first 3 / ₂ minutes. Randle needed only 6:53 to beat his total score on Friday night. He finished the first quarter with 20 points, while Bullock scored 14. The two combined to shoot 8 in 12 from beyond the arc in the first 12 minutes.
The result: The Knicks scored 41 points, the highest of the season, in the first quarter, taking a 41-15 lead in the second.
The advantage grew to 30 points in the first half, when a Derrick Rose jumper put the Knicks 51-21 at the start of the second half. The Pistons finally started to react from there, going in a 13-3 run to reduce the Knicks’ lead to 60-41 at halftime.
Perhaps most importantly, the Knicks was launched in the third quarter and showed little sign of slowing down. After breaking a nine-point lead against the Heat on Monday, an 18-point lead against the Timberwolves on Wednesday and a 13-point lead against the Mavericks on Friday, the Knicks kept their foot on the gas at second time. The Pistons got 17 points in the third quarter before the Knicks led again to 27 in 88-61 going into the fourth.
Before the game, Thibodeau had pointed out the lack of movement of the ball that hurt both the Knicks and the key players did not kick well in Friday’s 99-86 loss to the Mavericks. On Saturday, they got both.
“The big problem is that when our main guys don’t have a good night, we still have to do everything else to get up – from the selection and moving the ball to finishing our spacing and that sort of thing,” said Thibodeau. “But it is something that we are capable of, we understand that. It requires energy and effort. It’s a long season and you have to get over things. “